A deluxe visual treasure trove of photographs, letters, diaries and more from the iconic fashion model, photographer, wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and one of the most famous muses of the 20th century
Pattie Boyd (born 1944) was at the epicenter of the London music and pop-culture scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures features over 300 photographs and artworks, with Boyd sharing full and intimate access to her personal archive for the first time. Former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, Boyd is famously the inspiration for Harrison’s “Something” and Clapton’s “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight.” Boyd’s love of photography developed around the time of her marriage to Harrison. She documented their life together, and later also her second marriage to Clapton, capturing a vast archive of images not just as part of two of the most famous marriages of all time, but also documenting their close friends and contemporaries, including Twiggy, David Bailey, Mick Jagger, Billy Preston and the Beatles.
Boyd’s archive also includes letters from her marriages and from friends, including John and Yoko. It includes diary entries, artifacts and artworks, most famously the original Layla album cover painting by Emile Frandsen. It features extensive photographs from her early modeling career for Vogue and Vanity Fair among other publications, giving a fascinating snapshot into the sea change that occurred in the modeling industry from the postwar demure black-and-white approach to the psychedelic, short-skirt, swinging ’60s. It includes portraits and photographs of Boyd taken by some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, such as David Bailey, Eric Swayne, Terence Donovan, Robert Freeman and Robert Whitaker. The pictorial feast is further animated by Boyd’s accompanying stories and recollections.